A transportation management system, in response to transportation requests, may match the needs of transportation requestors with transportation providers. For instance, through a transportation application installed on a mobile device, a transportation requestor may request for transportation from a starting location to a destination at a particular time. In response to the request, the transportation management system may match the transportation requestor's needs with an available transportation provider and instruct the transportation provider to transport the requesting party from the specified starting location to the desired destination.
Conventional transportation management systems may respond to requests for transportation by dispatching vehicles with human drivers. In such systems, the human drivers typically manage maintenance and cleaning of the vehicles they drive, and use their own judgment to determine where to be geographically to optimize personal objectives (e.g., servicing the most transportation requests or stay within a region close to home). With technological progress in autonomous vehicles, transportation services may dispatch autonomous vehicles instead of human-driven vehicles to fulfill transportation requests. The capabilities of autonomous vehicles, however, are generally limited to driving autonomously from one location to another. In other words, autonomous vehicles are generally not configured to handle tasks outside of driving and navigating, especially tasks that serve fleet-level objectives. As such, a transportation management system that manages autonomous vehicles may involve more than matching and dispatching autonomous vehicles to fulfill transportation requests.